I am Dionysus, I am the god of wine-making, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, festivity, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, and theatre. I was also known as Bacchus (/ˈbækəs/ or /ˈbɑːkəs/; Ancient Greek: Βάκχος Bacchos) by the Greeks (a name later adopted by the Romans) for a frenzy I am said to induce called baccheia. As Dionysus Eleutherius ("the liberator"), my wine, music, and ecstatic dance free my followers from self-conscious fear and care, and subvert the oppressive restraints of the powerful. My thyrsus, a fennel-stem sceptre, sometimes wound with ivy and dripping with honey, is both a beneficent wand and a weapon used to destroy those who oppose his cult and the freedoms he represents. Those who partake of my mysteries are believed to become possessed and empowered by the god myself.